The manuscripts in which both these stories are preserved are much older than those that record the dreams preceding the births of Saints Kieran and Molasius. Yet the life of Saint Molasius, modern though it be in the recension we possess, attributes to its hero the power so often wielded by an Indian fakir. When he was journeying, with certain of his clerics, in the land of Carbery he saw a woman milking, who replied courteously and even generously to a request for a drink for his attendant. In return, she prayed for the saint’s intercession to be relieved of her barrenness, for hitherto she was childless. Then Molasius bade her: “Call thy husband; let him take my cup to the well and bring us back its fill of water in it.” When the water was given into his hand he blessed and consecrated it, and passed it to the woman to drink, prophesying that henceforth she should be pregnant and bear a son, who was to be “good, miraculous, saintly, wonder-working, righteous.” Thus was born “the very noble bishop Finnacha,” so named by Molasius when he gave his mother to drink.[117.2] The Book of the Dun Cow at the end of the eleventh century gives a similar incident in a much more savage form. Dermot, king of Ireland, had several wives, of whom Mughain was unhappy, because she had no children and the king was purposing to dismiss her. So she sought out Finnian and bishop Aedh, and implored their succour. They blessed water and gave it her to drink; but the result was nothing more encouraging than a lamb. Finnian consoled her as best he could for the mishap, and blessed more water. The next time she brought forth a salmon literally of silver. This, of course, was appropriated by the holy man for the service of the church as material for a reliquary and other sacred objects. Then he and bishop Aedh made another and supreme effort. They blessed her, and one of them put water into his cup and gave it to the queen, who both drank of it and washed in it. She ought perhaps to have done this before, for “by this process she found herself with child, and, this time, had a son, who was Aedh Sláine.”[118.1]
Before considering other stories of impregnation by drinking, let me refer to one more Irish tale. It concerns the birth of Boethíne, son of Cred, the daughter of Ronán, king of Leinster, and is found in the Leabhar breac, a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth century. The maiden gathered cress on which the sperma genitale of a certain robber, Findach by name, had just fallen, and ate it, “and thereof was born the everliving Boethín.”[118.2] This unsavoury story reminds us of the Princess Chand Ráwati in the Sanskrit romance. It bears even a closer resemblance to two legends from opposite quarters of the globe. One of them relates to a Peruvian goddess, Cavillaca. She was a beautiful maiden who spurned the advances of the gods. One day she sat down to weave a mantle at the foot of a lucma-tree. The wise Coniraya Uiracocha thereupon turned himself into a beautiful bird, and sat in the boughs of the tree. He took some of his semen, made it into the likeness of a ripe and luscious lucma, and dropped it at the maiden’s feet. She picked it up, ate it with much relish, and immediately conceived. In due course she gave birth to a son. When the boy could crawl, she called an assembly of the gods, and, indignantly protesting her virginity, demanded which of them was the father of the child. As nobody came forward to claim the honour, she put the little one on the ground, saying: “Doubtless his father will be the one to whom he crawls, and at whose feet he rests.” The child crawled to the feet of a ragged beggar, who sat humbly in the lowest place of all. The beggar was Coniraya; but Cavillaca, not recognising him, disdained the thought of being mated with such dirt and squalor; and, catching up her boy, she fled from his pursuit, though he assumed magnificent golden robes and divine splendour, until she came to the sea-coast of Pachacamac, where she and the child, entering the sea, were changed into two rocks, yet visible long after the Spanish Conquest, and doubtless to the present day.[119.1] The other legend is that of the nymph Adrikâ in the Mahâbhârata. Being by the curse of some god metamorphosed into a fish, Adrikâ feeds on a leaf dropped into the water by the favourite agency of a bird—in this instance, a hawk. Upon the leaf was the sperm of her lover, King Uparicharas. The fish is then caught by fishermen and brought to him. When it is opened the nymph resumes her proper form, and two fish, a male and female, are born of her.[120.1] The same incident is the substance of a folktale slightly less loathsome in form among the Gipsies of southern Hungary. They say that a rich peasant’s wife repulsed Saint Nicholas, who appeared to her as a beggar, and was transformed by him into a little fish and condemned to remain in that state until impregnated by her husband. Her husband threw the fish into the brook; and there it abode a long time, until one day the goodman sat before his door and thought of his wife, and how he could deliver her. So as he sat there he spat, and the spittle fell on a green leaf at his feet. Then a magpie, so often a go-between in these matters, snapped up the leaf in her beak and flew away with it. But as she flew she met another who would have torn the leaf from her; and in their struggle it fell into the water and was devoured by the little fish. Thereupon the heroine returned to her true woman-form and to her husband, for she had been fertilised by his spittle.[120.2] The Gipsy version appears to be derived from the Mahâbhârata, or more probably from the saga whence the poet fashioned the episode in question, and was doubtless brought from the East by the remote forefathers of the tribe.
We might linger long on the supernatural might of Indian kings and rishis, as well as the equally chaste and pious saints and reavers of Irish legend; but we must tear ourselves away from their edifying and veracious histories to seek the magical potation and the magical food elsewhere. The most illustrious birth by the former means was that of Zoroaster. A Parsee tradition preserved in the Selections of Zâd-sparam, who wrote shortly before the year A.D. 881, ascribes the conception of the great Iranian teacher to his mother’s drinking of homa-juice and cow’s milk infused with his guardian spirit and glory.[121.1] The lark, it is said in Roumania, was a maiden born of Gheorghina, the consort of an emperor named Titus. The imperial pair were childless; but an old woman in a dream directed the emperor that his wife should drink of the brook which watered a certain forest. She did so, and gave birth to a lovely daughter, who fell in love with the sun, but was cursed by his mother and changed into a bird.[121.2] Two divinities worshipped in a country temple in Annam are thus accounted for. A childless man and wife dwelt in the village. One rainy autumnal night the woman put an earthen vessel to receive the drippings of the roof, and she saw a star fall into the vessel. Astounded at the occurrence, she called her husband and told him what had happened. They resolved to say nothing about it, but to drink the water. The woman became pregnant, and after going three years in that state she was at length delivered of three blue eggs. The storyteller considered it necessary at this point to observe that the husband was very much surprised, and carefully kept the adventure to himself. However, they hatched the eggs, and three serpents crawled out, which followed their father about whithersoever he went. One day he had the ill-luck to cut off the tail of one of them. The wounded serpent forthwith was transformed into a fair youth, who said: “My brothers and I are heavenly genii who committed a sin, and were sent upon earth to succour the kingdom. They will stay, but I reascend to heaven in a tempest which will be a sign of the truth of my words.” The two other serpents remained. Sometimes they were changed into men of extraordinary powers; they rendered signal service against China, and ultimately were deified.[122.1] According to a Finnish song, the lovely maiden Kasaritar was also three years in a state of pregnancy. An ogress had spat upon the waves, and Kasaritar had swallowed the bubble of froth. When at length she brought forth, it was an evil brood, the lizard.[122.2] The Kotons are a Mongolian tribe. They say that the daughter of one of their khans went with forty of her maidens to a field to gather djemuis to eat. Becoming thirsty, the girls all went to the water and drank. In the midst of the water was a drop of blood, which was imbibed by the khan’s daughter and caused her to conceive. Her father drove her away; but her son afterwards became khan.[122.3]
We are not told here whether the blood was human. The analogy of some other sagas, and of several märchen, would lead to the supposition that it must be understood to be a man’s blood. Almost any portion of a man may be possessed of fructifying power. One of the märchen already passed in review attributes it to a man’s heart, and another to the ashes of a burnt skull. A story current among the Serbs is parallel to the latter. The emperor, hunting, finds a skull and causes his horse to step on it. The death’s-head cries out: “Why dost thou tread upon me? I am able to injure thee yet.” The emperor, hearing this, picks it up, burns it and collects the ashes in a casket. His daughter opens the casket and discovers the ashes. To ascertain what the contents of the box are, she wets her finger, dips it in the ashes and licks it. A boy is the result, who after a variety of adventures becomes the founder of Constantinople. This saga is found also in Ukrainia attached to the name of a national hero, Paliq.[123.1] As M. Dragomanov, who has brought these Serbian and Ukrainian legends under the notice of Western students, remarks, the tale is found as a märchen in the Turkish Tuti-Nameh, where it appears under the name of “The story of the skull through which eighty persons lost their lives.” There the man who picked up the skull was a merchant; instead of burning it, he ground it to powder; his daughter’s son had a reputation for wisdom, and was called in to say why a fish laughed when the vizier’s over-modest slave-girl refused to look at it, lest it should be a male. The youth, thus called on, reveals to the vizier the presence in his harem of forty men disguised as women, the lovers of his forty slave-girls; and the slaves and their lovers are all put to death, to the number of eighty.[124.1] I mentioned in the last chapter a Lithuanian story of a hermit who was burned, all but his heart, which was afterwards eaten by a maiden and caused her to give birth to a son. In a Sicilian legend this holy man is identified with Saint Oniria, or Neria. The maiden’s son is a new birth of the saint, who proves his sanctity when a child of only five years by convincing his grandfather and his mother’s godfather of the salvation of a poor, despised, dead beggar, and the damnation of a wealthy sinner, though borne to his grave upon a costly bier and accompanied by monks with burning tapers, and by revealing the existence of a hoard of gold beneath a dunghill. He is then taken up to heaven, and only appears again to save his grandfather’s life when accused of murder.[124.2]
A Gipsy tradition from Transylvania derives the origin of the Leïla tribe from a king’s daughter who was thrust out by her brother and his wicked wife, because the latter envied her that she was the fairer. In her wanderings she was pitied by three Keshalyi, or Fates; and one of them dropped some of her hairs, which the lovely maiden ate and brought into the world a son. From this child sprang the tribe, and he gave his descendants the name of his mother.[124.3]
But the Supernatural Birth comes about in märchen by other means than eating or drinking. It is the same in sagas. The sense of smell has been known to possess this marvellous virtue. The spirit of the pole-star, if we may credit a Chinese tale, visited a girl and gave her a fragrant herb called Hêng-wei, which caused her to become the mother of Chang, who was appointed about the year 25 of our era to the office of Master of Heaven.[125.1] The Gurû Gorakhnâth, whom we have already found performing wonders, once gave a queen desirous of offspring two flowers. Two sons were born to her; but because she had deceived him she was doomed to die at their birth.[125.2] According to a poem written in Old French by a priest at Valenciennes about the middle of the thirteenth century, Abraham planted in his garden the Tree of Knowledge, flung by God out of Paradise after the Fall. His daughter became pregnant by the scent of a blossom broken off from it, and bore Phanuel, from whom the Virgin Mary descended.[125.3]
Or it is enough for the magical article to be placed in the predestined maiden’s bosom. When from the blood of the mutilated Agdestis a pomegranate-tree sprang up, Nana the nymph gathered and laid in her bosom some of the fruit wherewith it was laden, and from hence, in classical belief, Attis was born.[125.4] In a Latin myth, Cæculus, the son of Vulcan and Præneste, was conceived by means of a spark which leaped into his mother’s bosom. The forty companions of the khan’s daughter, in the Koton legend already cited, were quickened by laying stones on their bosoms; and in this way from them multiplied the Sarabash tribes of the Altai mountains. On the western continent, one of the great Aztec deities, Huitzilopochtli, the brother and rival of Quetzalcoatl, had a similar origin. Coatlicue, the Serpent-skirted, was already the mother of many children. She dwelt on the mountain of the Snake, near the city of Tulla, and, being very devout, she occupied herself in sweeping and cleansing the sacred places of the mountain. One day, while engaged in these duties, a little ball of feathers floated down to her through the air. She caught it and hid it in her bosom; nor was it long before she found herself pregnant. Thereupon her children conspired to put her to death; but Huitzilopochtli, issuing from her womb all armed, like Pallas from the head of Zeus, speedily destroyed his brethren and sister and enriched his mother with their spoils.[126.1]
The Dorahs of New Guinea trace their parentage to a solitary old man, who caught the Morning Star in the act of stealing his palm-wine. As ransom he obtained from the felon a magical wand. This wand possessed the property of making a virgin a mother, by simply touching her bosom. The old man put its virtue to proof at once upon the loveliest girl of his island-home. She gave birth to a son called Konori, who proved his miraculous descent, as these children alone know how to do, by pointing out his father.[127.1] This calls to mind a well-known passage of the Mabinogion of which Lady Charlotte Guest’s modesty made nonsense. I venture to quote her charming English, with the needful correction. Math, the son of Mathonwy, is taking counsel with Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, the sons of Don, what maiden he shall seek for a wife. “ ‘Lord,’ said Gwydion, the son of Don, ‘it is easy to give thee counsel; seek Arianrod, the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy sister’s daughter.’ And they brought her unto him, and the maiden came in. ‘Ha, damsel,’ said he, ‘art thou a maiden?’ ‘I know not, lord, other than that I am.’ Then he took up his magic wand and bent it. ‘Step over this,’ said he, ‘and I shall know if thou art a maiden.’ Then stepped she over the magic wand, and there appeared forthwith a fine chubby yellow-haired boy. And thereupon some small form was seen; but before any one could get a second glimpse of it Gwydion had taken it and flung a scarf of velvet around it and hidden it. Now the place where he hid it was the bottom of a chest at the foot of his bed.” The yellow-haired boy was baptized by the name of Dylan. “As Gwydion lay one morning on his bed awake, he heard a cry in the chest at his feet; and though it was not loud, it was such that he could hear it. Then he arose in haste, and opened the chest: and when he opened it, he beheld an infant boy stretching out his arms from the folds of the scarf, and casting it aside. And he took up the boy in his arms, and carried him to a place where he knew there was a woman that could nurse him. And he agreed with the woman that she should take charge of the boy. And that year he was nursed. And at the end of the year he seemed by his size as though he were two years old. And the second year he was a big child and able to go to the Court by himself.” This second boy was afterwards named Llew Llaw Gyffes, and the rest of the story deals with his adventures.[128.1] It is clear that the wand is credited with phallic power. A saga of the Warraus of British Guiana is unambiguous in the ascription of such power to the stump of a tree. This stump was half-submerged in a pool where two Indian women were bathing, when one of them touched it and it promptly made her its wife. To her brothers’ indignation, a child was born; and after it died, a second interview with the stump resulted in a second child. This child, a boy, was slain by his mother’s brothers, who cut his body into small pieces. But from the grave arose a man stronger and fiercer than any Warrau. He was the first Carib; and hence there has always been enmity between the Caribs and the Warraus.[128.2]
We have found several cases, both of märchen and of sagas, where the masculine saliva and other secretions, if swallowed, produced pregnancy. The same consequence is believed to result from the spittle’s being received into the woman’s hand. The twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, honoured by the Quiché of Central America, were thus begotten. Hunhun Ahpu and Vukub Hun Ahpu having been put to death by the two kings of Xibalba, a mysterious subterranean realm, the head of the former was placed between the withered branches of a calabash-tree of the kind afterwards called Hunhun Ahpu’s head; and immediately the tree became laden with fruit; the head turned into a calabash, and was indistinguishable from the rest. Thereupon the kings tabooed the tree as sacred. Xquiq, the daughter of a prince named Cuchumaquiq, broke the taboo. As she approached to pluck the fruit, Hunhun Ahpu’s head spat into her hand, and she thereby conceived. Her father, perceiving her condition, condemned her to death; but she persuaded the executioners to deceive him, and gave birth in due time to twins of extraordinary power, who avenged themselves on the rulers of Xibalba after the manner of Medea upon Pelias.[129.1]
A similar incident is told in the Far East by the people of Annam concerning an historical personage who was put to death in the year 1443 of our era. He was, according to one account, the parent of the king’s wife. According to another account, this lady was a serpent who had taken the form of a young girl and been adopted by the hero of the legend, and given by him in marriage to the king. At all events, she slew the king by biting off his tongue; and she, with her father (or guardian) and all his family, was put to death. Her father was buried alive with one of his soldiers. The soldier’s wife succeeded in penetrating the grave, but only to find her husband already dead. His chief, however, was still living, and, protesting his innocence, he spat in the woman’s hand, wherefrom she became pregnant and bore a son who founded a new dynasty.[130.1]